Righthaven, a Las Vegas company associated with Las Vegas Review-Journal, has filed six lawsuits against web sites that have reposted articles, or portions of them, from the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The suits were filed against thelobolair.com, majorwagner.com, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, Henderson real estate agent Matt Farnham, MoneyReign, and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
Newspapers executives have complained about infringement online, but copyright suits over news items are rare. When Gatehouse Media sued Boston.com or Dow Jones sued Briefing.com, it was under the circumstance of market harm since they were competing for readers. The Righthaven lawsuits, on the other hand, are against companies that are not in the news business.
According to Farnham, one of the defendants who posted portions of two articles on his blog, no one asked him to remove the material before suing. He said, “I thought it was a compliment to the paper that I wanted to get that information out,” and added that the posts included links back to the newspaper.
The author of the article writes that, “The DMCA does not require content owners to send publishers takedown demands before suing unless infringing content is uploaded by third-parties.” The web sites could argue fair use, but they would have to prove they added original commentary.
If Righthaven wins the case what will that mean for us? Will we no longer be able to post someone else’s articles on blogs like this one? We have sites such as Wikipedia which is made up information found all over the web, and then we see a case such as this one – Righthaven going against websites that aren’t even in the same market. The ruling will be something worth looking out for.
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=126721&passFuseAction=PublicationsSearch.showSearchReslts&art_searched=&page_number=0
It’s interesting that newspapers would object in situations like this because, in reality, reposting the articles increases their circulation, which is something advertisers and PR companies look at before approaching a paper with business. Also, infringing for the purpose of news reporting is protected under fair use. News reporting is kind of an ambiguous term, but I think that coupled with original commentary, they can make a fairly persuasive argument in court.
The story behind this post is totally infuriating! Isn’t the point of Newspapers and other news outlets to spread the word? I just don’t understand how these sources can sue for copyright infringement…I just don’t get it and I don’t understand where the integrity of journalism has gone!
I see blogs using press releases all the time without giving credit to the source. They usually just put incorporate it into their own words and put quotations around the press release without even changing font or anything. It would probably never bring about a lawsuit since press releases are usually for promotion anyway, but maybe it would be wise for people to use a creative commons license so they at least get the proper credit for their press releases.